Warsaw – Potential Arson at the Wooden Bell Tower at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Victory

I frequently go on about the quality of life in Warsaw, the low crime, the low level of anti-social behaviour, the strong policing, the low litter and all manner of other positive attributes about the city. However, one of the historic buildings in Warsaw was lost a few days ago and arson has yet to be ruled out from the investigation.

This bell tower is located next to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Victory and the wooden construction dated to around 1817. For reasons relating to German and Russian occupation, there’s not a huge amount that is old in Warsaw, so the loss of this is highly sub-optimal. It took fire fighters around two hours to put out and they have been able to save around 25% of the wooden structure and the bells in their steel frame also held up.

The two bells, one of which dated to 1772, did quite well not to fall down and so it seems that they can be repaired and there is some excellent documentation of the structure from a few years ago. I don’t know the official titles, but the heritage people have already been on site to work out how to fix the situation. Knowing Poland, it’ll be fixed the next time that I go by and I rather hope that it transpires not to be arson.

And a couple of graves located near to the bell tower.